


Letters Unseen

by CapriciousVanity



Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Declarations Of Love, Falling In Love, Letters, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 15:28:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10539297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CapriciousVanity/pseuds/CapriciousVanity
Summary: Walton's affections for Frankenstein grow with each passing day, and wither just as quickly.





	

**Author's Note:**

> These are letters to Margaret, Robert Walton's sister, in-between the days he sent canonical letters. So read at least those letters, if not the whole story of Frankenstein.  
> Spoiler, maybe, considering it's 200 years old, but Victor Frankenstein dies of something akin to hypo-thermia in the end. The last letter here takes place just before the final letter to Margaret where Robert speaks of Victor's death.  
> I've been wanting to write something for a while and only now I've gotten to it. I hope whatever audience I bring enjoys it all the same.

_To Mrs. Saville, England_

_August 10 th, 17-_

A man who has traveled seas and oceans across this far, a treacherous, long journey for even our ship and seamen, was a miracle of itself, and how wondrous a man he was to have traveled so far. I could not bear to see him shake as he did, but I knew it out of place for my inferring coddling about him. A sublime creature that still radiated with a certain melancholic beauty even in his wrecked and wet-soaked state under blankets by the fire-stove. I offered him a soup once he was well enough to try, which was an unfortunate length of hours that felt as if I were a prison guard waiting to simply torture him; but it was better, nonetheless, else he would catch himself ill and just vomit over board again, with too much fire in his belly and not enough warmth on his skin.

I asked to seat beside him and he simply nodded, though disjointed and still cold, chattering and shivering, and I knew at once the hypo-thermia would be setting in. I cursed myself and of my crew, we may not have caught him quick enough to stop the onset of the bodily-cold. I took my wool-woven scarf and sheep-skin hat, warm enough as is, and wrapped the scarf around his neck, for which his eyes looked to me with confusion.

 “I meant not for you to use your own cloth and clothes on me and deprive yourself of such. I am warm enough as is; dare not find them so terrible, my tremors.” I could not believe my ears and too immediately I replied, “Heavens, no, of course not. It’s plenty warm, isn’t it? But you’d lose it all too soon if you don’t cover your head, at the least.”

Before he could interject, I continued, “Hypo-thermia is no small matter, and the ship is going no where until the ice has settled enough to let us through the way.” Somehow, this simply made him sad, I could see it in his eyes and slight gesture of his frown – always frowning, but not displeased, he’s simply always sad. I insisted on the hat.

“I thank you for your kindness, but do not believe I am inclined to speak so openly of my woes and displeasures, of how I’ve come to greet you here,” he said with bitterness. I felt in part offended but staved my feeling later; “No, of course not. I hadn’t meant it as a bribe. I simply mean for you to become well again, and if you’ve no where else to go, for now, then stay here ‘board my ship until we sail out again. You have no obligation, stranger, to tell us anything you wish you wouldn’t.”

He hadn’t even said his name, not yet, and I will dare not ask of it, but how sublime a creature he to even have a name at all? This stranger, dear sister, was a creature so lovely and spoke so softly, he dare not be allowed to be human, yet here he sat beside me, shivering with a flask of hot soup in hand and an iridescence to his pale blue eyes that enamored me so terribly.

Dear sister, I fear I have lost myself in the expedition, and yet somehow we came to be blessed with a man so kind and humble as he, it has restored life to me once more. I dared not write to you my doubts of this journey, but I have had them, and yet here is a sign, a blessing so called for my soul elates. Do wish me the best. I wish nothing less for him.

 

* * *

 

 

_To Mrs. Saville, England._

_September 6 th, 17-_

Margaret, I am anxious to say my friend’s decline in health has wrapped it’s cold worries around my very throat. He is languid and hardly roused, and I fear the hypo-thermia has yet to be treated proper. His violent shivers have returned once again, and all his breaths are laboured. I have not heard from the others, it appears they will truly mull over what Frankenstein had spoke them, and yet here I sit in waiting, either to be cast to England or await the fearful worst of my dear friend. His skin is cold to touch, and his fingers far too chill and stiff. 

I try to hold them, to rub warm friction into his hands, and yet he barely stirs, and here I worry still that perhaps the moment I find a friend, I lose him all the same. His skin is perhaps was once smooth porcelain, but here, now, he is pale and ghostly, suffering tremors terribly. I hope that when you get this letter, that I would have better news for you, Margaret; but now, right now, I fear the health of my friend. Perhaps a mutiny will be a blessing for us, after all, and if I were to be pushed back to England, I will bring him with me. 

 

* * *

 

 

_To Mrs. Saville, England._

_September 8 th, 17-_

Dearest sister, I kissed him then. Kissed him! How such sweet the feeling of his silken lips and smile against my own. Margaret, my soul is lifted, heart a-flutter, and here I write to you in the cabin with a soulful eye to Victor as he dozes in the confined of the night that held us tenderly through. After he had spoken to me all his tale had left to tell, he spoke to me as himself again. “Surely you must hate such a mad fool for such a miserable tale.” He avoided my eyes, he could not look at me and I felt that he thought himself a great a sinner and father of a daemon of destruction wrought upon the world. He admitted just as much. “How forlorn and wretched I to believe that greatness would have no fall.”

I could not speak at first, baffled that such a creature as he would ever believe himself less than awe-some. My blood gelled to terror at the thought of such a monstrous creature. But not Victor. Never Victor.

“No, God no, of course not,” I said to him. I needed to assure him, my sister, for I could feel in my marrow how sodden his sorrows made him. “My dear Victor, you have told me such a tale so heartfelt and true, I believe it, every word, you must not doubt any of this. How is it that I should look at a man who went to the ends of the earth with out his friends or colleagues to finalize a cause with pure determination?” Victor looked at me at once, as if I were something alien and strange.  I continued, still, “Victor, you have trusted me to tell me and even more to write this. I cannot ask of you to give anything more than this, and even then, I dared not ask at all from you, and yet I am honored you said as much regardless. I beg of you, my friend, to go to England with me after my journeys resolve here. I did not wish to tell you, but somehow I fear mutiny of my fellow seamen, and perhaps we shall leave sooner than later, but I offer you not only passage back to Europe, but to come with me to England. I would be obligated to introduce you to my sister, Margaret, and of her friends and my friends,” and I went on for a long many minutes, how red I was that I spoke so fervently as if my words may be the last I would say to Frankenstein at all, and the man simply let me speak, solemn and sad yet it made me swell with a hope I tried to stifle in my chest. How dare he fool himself, to forget the dead, the past, as if he deserve anything but what the Heavens had given him, he told me.

Frankenstein admitted in a sad tone, “I thank you, Walton, for your kind intentions, towards so miserable a wretch.”

Such as Frankenstein continued, and I felt my heart sink deep into the arctic blasted sea. I smiled, still, for this man’s sake. At once I was poised again and tried again to tell him, “Of course, my friend. I would never meant for you to replace what you have lost, I only meant you well.”

And Victor knew this, of course, nodding as he gave me a charming, quelled and thin smile. And I, then, felt a deep compelling desire, a fiery need to taste the sins Victor held so tightly locked away so deep in his very soul, and forward I drove until our lips met brief and chaste.

Now, he is still in a state of illness, but he told me in his eloquence, “How kind it is, and yet so cruel to have met you, Walton, on such terms and terrors by this sea. I regret it terribly that perhaps I would not ever meet another such as you, but that I acknowledge the blessing presented to me that through such tragedies, without them, I would not have fallen here and in your arms.”

He is weak and frail and yet I am here by his side. I hold hopes for us, sister. The expedition may lead to nothing, or it may lead to a glory that Frankenstein may duly be a part of, but so as long as I have him here, perhaps I am contented with whichever judgement falls to me. As I have said in a previous letter, I would rather die than return in shame; but know that now, it is no shame that I feel so deeply for Frankenstein as I ever have before, for anyone. 


End file.
